


though i'll never know your name i'll cry for you the same

by PrinceDrew



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Gift Fic, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jared being a Good Friend™, M/M, More platonic than anything, Textfics? idk, Tumblr Mutuals AU, it's not all that bad tbh, mentions of catfishing, referenced suicide via shrimp, so you got that to look forward too, there's talks of nudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 12:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDrew/pseuds/PrinceDrew
Summary: They had been talking for a little over a year.detoxjust-toretox‘give it time’‘i ruined everyone else’s’‘i guess you just got lucky’They had been talking for a little over a year, and Evan still didn’t know his real name.detoxjust-toretox‘sorry’‘i know that’s not what you want from me’‘but i’ve hung on one day too many’





	though i'll never know your name i'll cry for you the same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenti/gifts).



> Connor listening to classic fall out boy is a headcanon you can pry my cold, dead hands.
> 
> As always my friends, head the tags and decided whether or not you should read this fic. This one is a little lighter than my other works, but still, take care of yourselves first.

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘so yeah. sorry. we won’t talk again after tonight’  
‘you’re a good friend. one of the best i’ve had and i don’t want to fuck you up any more than i probably have so that’s why i’m telling you’  
‘so you don’t spend your life wondering what happened to me’  
‘sorry. it’s not your fault. it’s just that everything but you sucks in my life you get me?’  
‘i just can’t handle anything anymore. i just ruin everyone’s lives and everyday it gets worse and worse so i might as well just quit’

**my-trees-and-my-anxiety**  
‘You’ve never ruined my life’

They had been talking for a little over a year. 

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘give it time’  
‘i ruined everyone else’s’  
‘i guess you just got lucky’

They had been talking for a little over a year, and Evan still didn’t know his real name, though Detox knew his. He still called him Detox in his head, because what else could he call him? There wasn’t a name in his bio, or even an about page for his tumblr. Just his age - seventeen, he was seventeen, same age as Evan, he was sixteen when they first started talking, both of them were - pronouns - ‘he/him though tbh i don’t really care’- and the libra sign emoji.

His birthday was October 4th. That, at least, Evan knew.

**my-trees-and-my-anxiety**  
‘Can’t you stick around for one more day?’  
‘Just’  
‘Just to see the sun rise again or something’

A few minutes passed by without a response.

Detox had told Evan he had pills and vodka and whiskey, all swiped from his parents without them noticing. It would have been easy, so easy, for Detox to swallow them right at that moment, right there, right then, and Evan wouldn’t ever know. 

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘sorry’  
‘i know that’s not what you want from me’  
‘but i’ve hung on one day too many’  
‘i promise you’

And then:

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘it’s past midnight’  
‘aren’t you tired?’  
‘normally you’re asleep by now’

**my-trees-and-my-anxiety**  
‘You’re more important than me in this moment, if I’m honest here’

Another moment passed without a reply.

He had been told not to say things like that, by both his therapist and by Detox. That he was just as important as anyone else in the world. So maybe Detox was upset that he said something like that.

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘see’  
‘i’m not’  
‘i don’t get how you can think i am’  
‘i hope you life a good life, evan. even if i’m not in it’  
‘you deserve it’  
‘thank you. for all you’ve done.’  
‘i wish we could have met in person some day’  
‘good night.’

**my-trees-and-my-anxiety**  
‘Wait’  
‘Before you go’  
‘What’s your name?’

He waited for a minute, which turned into two, which turned into ten, and before he realised that it was 2 AM and he had no reply, and he had to be up for his first day of senior in four hours and forty-five minutes, so he had to sleep, even it was only really a nap rather than the full amount he knew he need. 

The lack of reply was worrying, but not surprising. Detox had never wanted to tell Evan his name. He didn’t even want to know Evan’s at the beginning.

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘you get attached to names’  
‘i’m not someone you want to get attached to and i’d rather not get attached to someone else’

But he had to call him something. So, Detox it was.

Detox had been to one to message first back then, mostly because Evan had written a long and sprawling post about wanting to cut, but being too scared to cut, but the urge was too strong and it felt like he was going to scratch his wrists until they were bloody and raw and open but he couldn’t cut because his mom would see it and he couldn’t let his mom see it and - and - and -

\- and so on, like that.

It was kind of sad, really, in that pathetic way most of Evan’s posts were. But Detox - who had been following Evan for a month, it seemed - had responded, sending him a message within five minutes of Evan posting.

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘use an ice cube’  
‘like. hold it in your hand or over your wrist for a few moments’  
‘it might hurt but y’know’  
‘less damaging than a cut’  
‘she won’t see it either’

Evan had thanked him, and then, for whatever reason, they just kept talking. And talking, and talking, and talking, until messaging Detox was routine, and easy, easier than anything else in Evan’s life.

Which was sad, really. 

Realistically, it was entirely possible that Detox was just Jared catfishing Evan for some reason or another. Maybe Jared was sharing screenshots of their conversations to some group chat of his, laughing at Evan’s messages in all their honesty and earnestness and patheticness.

Though really, Evan wasn’t entirely sure if Jared would have gone to the effort of creating and maintaining a separate persona. Especially when it came to someone like him.

Detox had asked for nudes exactly once before, but the grammar and spelling had been atrocious and the message right afterwards had been ‘dude im hgih as s h i t rn’ and most of his posts from that evening had been incomprehensible at best. He had apologised the next day.

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘sorry about the nudes thing. high me is an asshole’

**my-trees-and-my-anxiety**  
‘You say that about regular you’

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘don’t call me out like this’

The thing was, it wasn’t as though Detox was some great and powerful mastermind of privacy. The fact he openly blogged about how much he wanted to kill himself was proof enough of that, at least. But things had slipped through the conversations to the point where Evan had a somewhat solid image of him.

He was a few months older than Evan, and he had a sister a year younger than him who his relationship with was rocky at best, and his parents were together, but only just from the way he phrased it. His hair was long, and his dad kept looking at him like he wanted him to cut it, but never told him to do so. He lived in Maryland, the same state as Evan, but would have prefered to live somewhere else, anywhere else, just so long as it was far away from people he knew.

He also had a shellfish allergy, and frequently explained his elaborate fantasy wherein he committed suicide by consuming vast amounts of shrimp.

**my-trees-and-my-anxiety**  
‘I worry about you’

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘who doesn’t?’

When Evan was awoken by Heidi the next morning, it felt like he hadn’t slept at all, though not in that good, weightless way. More like every limb and inch of his body hurt and ached and felt like lead. His cast felt like more concrete around his arm. For a moment, he considered skipping, but it was the first day. He couldn’t skip.

There was still no reply from Detox.

It only really occurred to Evan as he stood in front of his locker, fiddling with the sharpie his mom gave him so people could sign his cast, that Detox was dead.

Could. He could be dead.

And. And that was strange to Evan, in a way.

Death just - just wasn’t a thing in Evan’s life. People left all the time, sure, but they were still alive, still there, he could email or message or talk to most of them, they just didn’t talk to him. But they could come back, if they wanted to. Death was permanent. Death was - Death was -

Death was The End.

His granddad on Heidi’s had died long before he was born, and his grandmother was still alive. The two on his dad’s side had disappeared along with him. One of Heidi’s friends from college died when he was eight in a car crash. But that was all. It was never someone he really knew.

Detox had known the truth about Evan’s fall. At the time he had promised to take the secret to his grave.

Why did he have to be so _god damn literal_ about it?

“Woah, dude, you okay? You look like shit, no offence.”

Jared’s voice jolted Evan back to reality. He still staring at his locker, shaking, sharpie still in hand, and when he blinked, his eyes were almost brimming with tears, and his throat was clogged up and his cheeks were warm, hot, burning like they always did when he was about to cry.

“I’m, uh, I’m fine,” he mumbled, not turning to look at Jared. “J-Just didn’t, uh, sleep all t-that well last, um, last night.”

For a moment, Jared just stared at Evan, and then he launched into a tirade about how Evan ‘really’ broke his arm by jacking off to Zoe Murphy’s instagram, was he honestly going to try to break his other one _and_ fuck up his first day of senior year by doing the exact same thing?

Throughout the day, Evan kept checking his tumblr for signs of Detox, his heart pounding each time he did so, but there was nothing. No posts, no messages, no reblogs. Complete silence. No signs of life.

He wouldn’t be able to go to the funeral, he thought blearily just as he fell asleep in biology, Detox and death still circling in his mind.

It all seemed to pass by in a blur. He wasn’t even sure if he was entirely there or not, even with Jared shooting him concerned looks and pulling him aside more than once to whisper in his ear that if he needed to go home, Jared could take him.

He ended up taking Jared up on that offer, texting Heidi that he felt ill and that he’d be okay if he slept through the day. She texted back the way she normally did, emojis punctuating every sentence and ending with a string of hearts.

Then, just after he collapsed onto his bed and before he was able to fall back asleep, he checked tumblr one last time, because what harm was there in just checking?

A message, from five minutes ago, just sat there, waiting for him.

**detoxjust-toretox**  
‘connor’  
‘my name is connor’

**Author's Note:**

> This is my friend's Rob's birthday gift and yes it is 5 days late, but considering last year it was April by the time I got her fic out, I think I'm doing very well for myself.
> 
> (Have I mentioned how much I love you rob??? Because I love you so very very much)
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed this fic! If you have any questions, liked the fic, have feedback or noticed any mistakes, post in the comments below, or at my tumblr [here](http://princedrewwrites.tumblr.com). I'm on there pretty often now. Or, if you just liked the fic and don't want to say anything, just leave a kudos. There's no pressure either way.


End file.
